What is Happiness
by barefootwits
Summary: Hannibal takes care of his boys when they're literally boys. De-aged Murdock, Face, and BA. Hannibal/Face slash!


Now I've seen the film three times and am planning on seeing it again within a few days. In love. This fic is in response to this prompt: _De-aged!Face & Murdock & B.A __Let's see Hannibal taking care of his boys while they are literally boys_. I'm so happy with it. It came so easily, too. I love writing children, I love writing these guys. Some tv-show reference, such as Billy the invisible dog, but meant to be Movie!verse. (If only because a tiny Sharlto Copley is adorable in my head.) Reviews and con-crit are awesome!

Disclaimer: I don't own the Rangers, but I wish I was one.

* * *

What wakes Hannibal up isn't what normally wakes him up. It's not arms coming around his middle and pulling him in close, or kisses along his neck. It's feet running against the creaky, wooden floor of the house Face had scammed them, and it's the door whoosing open fast enough to send a chill into the bedroom. The colonel blinks his eyes open and half-sits, looking to the spot on the bed that Face normally would have been occupying.

Then he hears a shout, one that's high-pitched and unfamiliar... but not.

And as he gets up, sure something is happening that's entirely unanticipated and that he's going to have to fix, he hears his name being called. But again, it's that strange voice that he can't place, and it makes him move fast.

When he gets to the bathroom, he stares down at huge blue eyes that hold every emotion of terror he thinks is possible.

He's about to say something, but then a hand pulls against the back of his shirt, and when he turns around there's another pair of child's eyes looking up at him, but these ones are just confused, curious, and sleepy.

"Hannibal."

His head snaps up. He knows it's Face. He knows it's the kid, standing in front of him in his t-shirt that suddenly goes down to his ankles, somehow _a kid._

It's Murdock, too, who pushes past when he spies Face, and stands as tall as he can to get a view of himself in the mirror. He reaches up to put a hand against the glass to make sure it's actually him, and then his face lights up with awe and excitement. He proceeds to do poses, trying to catch the mirror messing up, so he can accuse the little boy in it that his trick wasn't successful. But then Face stamps his foot, which gets his best friend's attention, and his lover's, who tries to hold in a laugh.

"Wh- why... Why are we like this?" Face demands, stumbling over his words because he can't help cringing at his voice.

Part of Hannibal knows he should be forming a plan, but he merely shrugs. He knows that he should also probably be upset that his lover is now seemingly ten years old for no known reason, but he's more amused than anything. Intrigued, too.

Murdock responds to Face by throwing a hand into the air emphatically, jumping up and down. Hannibal puts a hand on his shaggy brunette head to calm him. "Captain?"

"This is the home of the spirits of children who wait for people to visit so they can enter them while they sleep and magically change them into the age of their childhood that was the least happy for them. They do it so that the visitors have a chance to make that part of their childhood better and get a real chance to be a kid!"

"How do you know that?" Hannibal needed a cigar.

"Billy talked with them. Dogs have an incredible connection with the spiritual world."

Face was casting Murdock the dirtiest look Hannibal had ever seen him give anyone. He wondered about it briefly, but Murdock's hand went up again. Before Hannibal coud really respond, his kid-pilot was off and darting down the hall, giggling the whole way.

"I wonder if Bosco was changed by one of the spirits too!" He sang, and Hannibal exchanged a look with the little Face that they would have exchanged under normal circumstances, if Face weren't three feet tall and all ruffled hair. But there was the absence of a grin there that made Hannibal discontent.

He would have wondered aloud what the matter was, but at that moment shouting sounded from down the hall and he knew he had to go see if BA was about to enter puberty as well.

::::::::::

They settled into the day, for the most part.

When Hannibal asked Murdock how long these spirits were supposed to keep them changed, the boy skipped around him, explaining that according to Billy they were going to stay children until something happy happened to them that would counter that most unhappy thing. Then he pulled a still-frowny Face from his breakfast to play pretend fighter-jets up and down the stairs. The blonde went along, but with little enthusiasm at first.

Hannibal was cautious. He watched the two of them until Face finally seemed to begin enjoying himself, unable to fight back a smile when Murdock pounced him and said he was being held captive for being 'the pirate lieutenant Gus Grumpbeard, out to wipe the smiles off of everyone from the shores of Antarctica to the deepest sea of Mercury.' Face pushed him away, declaring that he couldn't be Gus Grumpbeard because Gus Grumpbeard was Bruce Wayne's secret evil identity and he didn't have a butler named Alfred.

Murdock nodded and titled his head at the same time, then gasped and pointed up the stairs, taking on an adorable Australian accent. "Blimey, Temtem, rabid dingoes on the prowl! They're chasing Billy!" And the two were off into one of the bedrooms.

The only thing that pulled Hannibal's attention away from listening to them was BA, who snorted beside him, nose burried in a book that was comically too big for him and had to be laid out on the table. His high cheekbones were more pronounced as a child and without his beard and sideburns, but his brow still furrowed the same way with the same serious focus. Hannibal could see that he wasn't pleased, though not as blatantly as he could tell with Face. He placed a hand on his small sergent's shoulder.

"What are you thinking, Bosco?"

"Of how stupid this shit is," he grumbled, and then he looked up at Hannibal, who didn't know whether or not he should scold BA for swearing. He wouldn't take it from Murdock, or from Face even. BA, however, was the only one who'd become a teenager, so Hannibal figured he shouldn't be a hypocrite.

He offered the dark boy a small smirk of agreement.

"Why aren't you a kid, bossman?"

"I guess there are only three spirits in this house," he stated, really having no explanation for it. "Someone had to provide adult supervision."

"Basically what you always do," BA offered, humor gleaming in his deep eyes.

::::::::::

BA had turned back into himself by two o'clock. None of them could say why, but Murdock insisted that he must have had something happy happen to him. BA muttered that it was having the pilot off his back for once, but this statement came back at him when, after he'd lifted Murdock up off the ground to get him out of the way of the television, the rambunctious boy in the over-sized baseball hat tried to get BA to carry him around the whole afternoon, begging him to be the giant who could only be killed with rubber bands.

This meant that Murdock's interest in Face as a playmate gradually diminished. He hung around in the doorway, waiting for Murdock to come back so they could go save the Incas. Then he sat on the stairs, petting the empty air beside him. By four, Face was nowhere to be found.

Hannibal started searching the entire house. He actually opened all the closets and stuck his head under every bed. He was about to call on an emergency search when he heard a scrabbling overhead.

Going onto the balcony of his and Face's room, he discovered a chair stacked on a side-table. A makeshift ladder. The kid was clever as always.

With a little work, he managed to get himself onto the roof. There was Face, curled in on himself, little body visibly shaking, face hidden in the crook of an elbow. It tugged Hannibal's heart hard. This whole transformation thing had been an agony on Face from the beginning, and it only clicked now, as he stepped closer to his lieutenant and the boy lifted his head quickly. He was being forced to live through being parentless and unwanted again, and he couldn't handle it.

His eyes were full of frustration.

"Come here."

Hannibal opened his arms and Face didn't hesitate to bury himself in the embrace. His small body clung on, and it caught Hannibal off-guard how they still somehow fit perfectly, just in a different way. He nuzzled into the soft, touseled hair under his chin, sighing.

"I'm sorry, Face."

"Just tell me you won't leave me."

Those words made Hannibal pull the kid closer, wishing he could somehow give Face a way to feel what he did in his heart. It wasn't Face asking him if that was how he felt. It was Face telling him that was what he needed to hear, even if it wasn't true.

"No one's going to leave you again, kid. This is your family."

The little head nodded. Hannibal pulled back, forcing downcast blue eyes to look up at him.

"We love you."

::::::::::

Hannibal had a hard time figuring out a way to get them back onto the balcony, both now grown men. When they came down the stairs, Face was glaring at him in response to the scratch trailing down his arm. But he took Hannibal's hand in his for a short moment near the bottom of the steps, and squeezed.

They found that Murdock had somehow become his crazy _adult_ self in the span they'd been on the roof, but BA was threatening the spirits to change the pilot back. Face asked him over dinner what he'd done to turn a blissful seven-year-old Murdock back into himself, grin in place, ready to tease. It ended up having to do with a ceiling fan to the head or something, when BA had finally relented to picking him up, and he actually looked sorry for it.

"We should have children, Bosco! You're so good with me," Murdock declared.

When Face was done cracking up over the look on BA's face, he turned to Hannibal, leaning his elbow on the table and resting his head in his hand.

"I wish I'd gotten to see you as a kid," he mused.

Hannibal chuckled. "It wasn't part of the plan."

::::::::::

The next morning he woke up exactly how he was used to, with Face curled into his side, murmuring just softly in his sleep.

He caught the word "family" and turned his head to find a smile on his lover's face.


End file.
